Schome is an ongoing research initiative which is working to develop a 'fit for purpose' education system for society today. We are working on developing a system which will support people learning throughout their lives, from the cradle to the grave. Unlike other initiatives to transform education, the Schome Initiative takes the view that you needed to start with a vision of the ideal education system that would genuinely meet the needs of society and individuals in the 21st century, unconstrained by preconceptions of existing education systems.

The Schome initiative has, to date, published 28 peer-reviewed books, book chapters and journal papers, as well as many conference presentations, posters, reports and newsletters. For links to these, see Schome publications. For Schome videos visit our YouTube playlist

EdFutures.net is dedicated to helping change our current education system from within, to make it fit for the 21st century. It complements Schome which aims to create an education system fit for the 21st century from 'a clean sheet'.

What is the Schome Park Programme?

The Schome Park Programme consisted of a series of research projects, which set out to extend thinking about what education systems might be like. It ran from March 2007 until October 2008. Nearly two hundred 13 to 17 year olds, and around 50 adults, have had some level of involvement with the programme which used our ‘closed’ island(s) in Teen Second Life™ virtual world alongside this wiki and the Schome forum.

Schome on iTunes

A video of Schome Park is available on iTunesU, which can be accessed via www.open.ac.uk/itunes/
This Open University video shows a member of staff (Fox) interviewing a student (Vibia) in world, in the Time Explorers area of our island on the Teen Grid of Second Life.
The video can be found in the 'Exploring teaching and learning in real and virtual worlds' collection. Track 4 - Virtual worlds: Schome Park.
Also available (track 3) is a video of two of the staff of the project on the Open University islands on the SL Grid. Track 3 - Virtual Worlds: The OU in Second Life